


Sleep Well, my Friend

by volley



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Episode: s01e16 Shuttlepod One, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:13:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29519976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volley/pseuds/volley
Summary: Coda to Shuttlepod One. Picks up right where the episode left us.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Sleep Well, my Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I've watched Shuttlepod One, I've been somewhat frustrated by its ending: Trip is out cold and it feels that there is something missing... Maybe... a conversation like this one.
> 
> Grateful thanks to my super beta readers, Gabi2305 and RoaringMice. You always make my stories so much better.

\--------

“Trip?... Mind if I call you Trip?”

If he had not been in such a placid state of abandonment, finally safe, and especially warm, Trip would have smiled. But he was contentedly floating at the edge of consciousness, that state where you hear things but do not find it in you to move a muscle. And to be honest he was more than happy to pretend to be out cold, for Archer and Phlox and T’Pol and Engineering and all the rest of the crew and of the universe could wait. He deserved some rest.

“Sleep well, my friend.”

But now that smile did make it to Trip’s lips. “ _My friend_?” he slurred. “’S that ya, Malcolm?” He cracked his eyes open and slowly turned to the man in the next biobed. Gawd, Malcolm was a mess! Beard stubbled cheeks, pale, exhausted face – not that he himself must look any better – and eyes that were now crossed by a glint of some unidentified emotion. Trip saw him swallow hard.

“Commander… I meant…” Malcolm began, seemingly uncertain how to continue.

It was the man’s confusion that did it, his apparent regression to the tongue-tied subordinate; or perhaps it was the need to exorcise the tension of the last hours: be it what may, Trip’s mischievous self was suddenly out of the box. He instantly became a notch more alert. “Are we sure we’re back?” he wondered, leaving the subject of their friendship or lack thereof hanging, for the moment. “Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe we’re dead.”

“No. Honestly. We _are_ back,” Malcolm hurried to reassure him, reviving a bit. “I’ve just asked the Sub---” He cut himself off abruptly and closed his mouth, eyes narrowing in thought.

The man was no idiot. Trip watched realization dawn on Malcolm’s face.

“You’ve heard,” Malcolm said deadpan, turning slightly away in irritation.

It was futile to deny it, so Trip chuckled. “Ah, come on Malcolm. There’s no privacy here, it isn’t exactly easy NOT to hear, if ya haven’t noticed.” Guarded grey eyes dared shoot him back a glance, and Trip turned on his right side to face the other man, shifting around to find a comfy position. “So… What was all that about _heroics_ , anyway?”

“Nothing, Commander,” was the terse reply, delivered from the darkest abyss.

Trip sighed. “Thought we were on first names terms.”

“Respectfully, _Sir_ , I’m not sure I want to be.”

“What was I s’pposed to do, block my ears and start singing?” Trip insisted, adjusting his blanket. The conversation had finally got past the cotton wool that had been stuffing his brain to that point. He was now wide awake.

There was a silence. Malcolm was studying him. Words echoed in Trip’s mind. _I’ve invested far too much time trying to figure you out, Mister Tucker…_ He instinctively shivered, while at the same time wondering what was there to figure out about himself. If anyone, it was Lieutenant By-the-Book Reed who kept things to himself.

“Come on, Malcolm,” Trip repeated, returning to the present. “What can be so bad? After all we’ve gone through…”

Malcolm studied him some more; then licked his lips. With a visible effort, he raised himself on his elbows and surveyed Sickbay, making sure nobody was around. Then collapsed back and heaved a deep breath, eyes on the ceiling. “In the Shuttlepod, when I was asleep---”

“Ya mean when ya were calling out for that _Stinky_ guy?”

“… I dreamt we’d been rescued and were in Sickbay, lying on biobeds as we are now.”

Malcolm shot Trip a glance, as if to assess if it was safe to continue. Apparently, he decided it was.

“The Subcommander was telling me that she’d been impressed by my heroics,” he went on. He shrugged. “So, when I came to and saw her there, I thought I’d make sure I wasn’t dreaming again, and asked her if she had anything to say to me on that subject.”

“I see.”

A door opened and Phlox entered, singing softly under his breath. Exchanging a quick, almost panicked look of agreement, they went still, playing unconscious. If the Denobulan doctor was ever aware of it he closed and eye, realizing perhaps that his patients needed some space. Trip felt him hovering about for a moment, and it was only when he heard the door of sickbay swish closed that he ventured a peek.

“Coast is clear,” he whispered to Malcolm.

“Thank God,” was the man’s relieved reply.

They fell into a companionable silence.

“Are you okay?” Malcolm suddenly asked, in a hoarse, uncharacteristically frail voice.

Talk about a loaded question. Trip didn’t feel like giving it consideration. “Yeah. Sure,” he automatically replied. “You?”

“Fine.”

They studied each other.

“Well, if I look only half as _okay_ as I feel, and _fine_ as you look…” Trip said, leaving the rest to imagination.

Malcolm stirred. “Can’t wait to take a shower.”

Trip rolled his eyes, mildly amused by the guy’s obsession with looking pristine. “You’re allowed to look kind of rumpled, Malcolm. You nearly froze to death!”

The words had hardly left his mouth that the images and feelings they conjured up assailed him with unwarranted vividness. He saw Malcolm react to them as well, a troubled expression coming over his face.

“Hell. Sorry.” Trip said, fighting to clear his mind of them. His peace suddenly shattered, he struggled with memories and feelings he’d rather were erased forever.

Malcolm hugged himself tightly. “We’ve made it, that’s what counts,” he forced out. He sounded exhausted. They both were, of course. But Trip doubted they would have a good night’s sleep for a long time, without the help of some of Phlox’s magic potions.

“To get back to those heroics…” Trip began, all cheerfulness gone from his voice. He met Malcolm’s wary gaze. “If we both made it back, I have you to thank.” And before Malcolm could say anything to that he went on, “Without your idea of jettisoning the warp drive we’d be two dead bodies drifting in space by now.”

He watched Malcolm quickly hide his surprise. Ah. He must have thought that Trip was going to address that incident when he had tried to climb into the airlock and Malcolm had threatened to shoot him. And if truth be told that _was_ where he had wanted to go, if only, at the last moment, some qualm, his pride, or God-knows-what had not taken him off course. Trip turned slightly away, afraid to reveal the shame he still felt. He, the inveterate optimist, in the end had lost hope, and had been saved by their resident pessimist.

When he thought of it – and since he had regained consciousness that film kept playing in his mind – Trip could not really explain what had come over him. He had lashed out so strongly at Malcolm for giving up on any hope that they might be saved, for being so ready to look the Dark Lady in the face and reach out to her bony hand, with all those farewell messages of his. Heck, Trip had not been ready. He was a young man full of life and of things he still wanted to accomplish. He had held on to hope with all his strength, and then…

“I don’t know… I didn’t _really_ expect that Enterprise would see the explosion…” Malcolm said in a faraway voice. “I didn’t really expect that we’d be rescued, if truth be told.”

“You don’t say!” Trip blurted out, re-experiencing the irritation of the past hours. If he had stabbed the man, he probably would have hurt him less, judging by the pained expression on Malcolm’s usually stoic face. “Ah, look, I’m sorry,” Trip hurried to add, but a part of him felt an almost wicked pleasure. For Lieutenant By-the-Book Reed had been a helluva pain in the rear, in that Shuttlepod, with his inveterate pessimism. Trip rubbed a hand over his stubby face, totally mixed-up, but he couldn’t cancel what he’d just said or how he felt.

There was no reply, and the silence this time felt a little less companionable. Trip couldn’t stand it. He slowly began to push himself up to a sitting position, then turned to let his legs dangle on one side, facing Malcolm and daring a look at him.

“And what are you doing, now, Commander?” Malcolm asked, tensing up as he eyed Trip with a critical eye.

Trip rubbed his legs. “I’m fidgety. I can’t sleep. I’ve had enough of being trapped somewhere.”

“If the Doctor finds you like that, there’s no telling what he’ll do to you.”

“Yeah, well, he’s welcome to give me a hypo,” Trip said tautly. “It’d be nice to get a few hours of deep, preferably dreamless sleep.” There was no answer to that. Malcolm probably wouldn’t say no to it either, Trip figured.

And then, out of the blue, Malcolm came out, in that spiky accent of his, “I know why you were mad at me, in the Shuttlepod. It wasn’t because of my alleged _pessimism_ , it was because you knew that I was right, and you couldn’t accept it, you didn’t want to admit to yourself that we’d be facing the end of the line. So, you took it out on me.”

He looked thoroughly pleased to have made a clean breast of that. They seemed to be back to square one, biting each other’s heads off. Trip lifted his eyebrows provocatively. “Oh yeah?” he spat back, firmly grabbing the edge of biobed with both hands and leaning forward, “Meanwhile, look who DIDN’T end up facing the end?”

Caught off-balance by that undisputable truth, Malcolm looked sharply away, growling, “We came close enough, Commander.”

“Trip.”

Trip closed his eyes and slowly filled his lungs with air, as if to reassure himself that there was enough of the precious thing in the room.

“How long have we been out, you reckon?” he wondered after a moment, to break the umpteenth silence that was punctuating this stilted conversation of theirs. His last memories were rather fuzzy, what with the _balmy_ Shuttlepod’s temperature, the lack of oxygen and that bottle of Bourbon, bless it! that he and Malcolm had downed.

“I don’t know. A few hours,” was the gruff reply. “The Captain said it took Phlox three hours to warm us up.”

Trip’s mind was still on the bottle of whisky. “Funny we don’t have a hangover,” he wondered. “I didn’t _dream_ that we got drunk on Archer’s bourbon, right?”

That, at least, solicited a tentative smile. “You certainly did not. I suppose Phlox took care of that too.”

“Yeah.”

“Look, Commander…”

“ _Trip_. We’re not on the Bridge.” - Ah, why did he even try…

Malcolm tightened his lips, suddenly serious again. His feelings, usually well bottled up inside, seemed only skin deep, as they had been during that hapless mission.

“I apologize if I annoyed you with my… attitude.”

Trip opened his mouth to speak but then closed it, curious to know where this would go. He looked straight back, waiting for more, and clearly perceived that for Malcolm that was going to be it. “And?” he prodded.

“And… and there’s the fact that in my line of work I’m more prepared than others to the inevitable. So, you shouldn’t label as _pessimism_ what---”

I thought you said you didn’t want to die,” Trip interrupted him. Why the hell was he doing this? Provoking Malcolm any way he could? Well, he knew exactly why, because of that image that kept haunting him.

“I didn’t. And I don’t,” Malcolm said darkly. “But I’m prepared.”

“Ah!” Trip burst out, “No wonder you dream about T’Pol drooling after you because of your heroics!” He shook his head in sarcasm. “That’s all you can think of, how to go down in history as a---”

“Drooling? Who ever…” Malcolm shot up to a sitting position. “Commander…” he said almost threateningly.

“--- as a hero,” Trip obliviously went on. “You must be real proud of yourself, such a noble deed!”

“ _Commander_ …”

“Saving a superior officer who’d gone off his rocker!”

“COMMANDER…”

Yes, because the image that haunted Trip, that of himself climbing the ladder to the airlock and Malcolm pulling him down at phaser point, was driving him mad, for more than one reason. Relentlessly, Trip went for the final thrust. “Shoving a phase pistol in my face and telling me what a coward---”

“TRIP!”

The word cracked like a whip. Trip was left with his mouth ajar, tears stinging behind his eyelids, his heart thumping loudly in his ears.

Malcolm slowly turned to face him, letting his legs dangle off the biobed too. “I never said you were a coward,” he said in a tone that wanted to drive the point home. He winced. “Alright, I did say something… to that implication, but I didn’t really think it.” He looked away, eyes on the floor, in that manner of his. “If you must know, I thought you did do that to give me a chance. If you must know… Well, I was scared as hell to face death alone.”

The words – Trip was sure of it – had cost Malcolm big. He looked for something to say, but his voice seemed to have gone AWOL. Were they both ashamed of that moment?

Malcolm let out a huff. “I’m not immune to fear, you know. How’s that for a _hero_?”

All energy seemed to have seeped out of Trip’s body. He frowned. “So, what are you sayin’?” he wondered, pressing the heal of his hands over his eyes to try and dam the wetness that threatened to overflow. Malcolm’s words had changed the perspective on what he thought had been the lowest point in his career, but he wasn’t quite sure how.

“I guess what I’m saying,” Malcolm said pensively after a long moment, “is that we’ll never know whether you wanted to buy me some time at the cost of an early demise or end your agony sooner; if I wanted to save my Commander’s life or was just too bloody afraid to be left to face my own destiny alone like a dog…” He frowned almost painfully. “I guess what I’m saying is that there were neither cowards nor heroes in that Shuttlepod, only two blokes in a desperate situation, with their hopes and fears, courage and frailty.”

Trip’s restlessness seemed to have gone. He looked back blankly. “It’s a thin line, between heroism and cowardice, and sometimes they blur into each other. It that it?” he wondered.

“So it appears,” Malcolm huffed out.

They both lay back down, both getting absorbed in their own thoughts.

Sickbay was very quiet. Phlox’s menagerie seemed to be asleep. Only the two of them could not find rest, though the clean breast they had made of the incident had helped, Trip thought.

“Ya don’t suppose that we could---” Trip began, but he cut himself off when the doors swished open and in came the round figure of their Denobulan Doctor. “Ah!” Phlox exclaimed, for this time they were not fast enough to play dead, “how are my patients?” He made a beeline to their biobeds.

“Peachy.”

“Fine.”

Phlox’s mouth blossomed into a smile. “As was to be expected.” He checked their parameters. “I will keep you in Sickbay overnight, just to be on the safe side and make sure you rest properly, and tomorrow, if you get some solid sleep, you can return to light duties.”

Trip exchanged a meaningful look with Malcolm. “Well, Doc,” he said, “any chance you can help a bit in that respect? We’re still wound up tight.”

“But of course!”

Phlox might just as well have been sent to fetch them something delicious, judging by the glee in his voice. He walked off, casting over his shoulder, “And you, Mister Reed?”

“Same as he’s having, yes,” Malcolm hurried to say.

A moment later Phlox returned with a hypo, and each received a dose.

“And now, sweet dreams,” Phlox said. “I’ll be back in a little while to check on you.” And he left.

Trip could already feel the drug smoothing out all the accumulated knots of tension. “Watch out. Not too much heroism in yours, Malcolm,” he quipped. “Especially in conjunction with T’Pol.”

Malcolm just growled.

Silence stretched. Oblivion called. Ah, yeah, he had wanted to…

“Ya don’t suppose that we could leave that little airlock incident out of our official reports, do ya?” Trip still found the energy to ask. He turned to look at Malcolm, eyes already at half-mast. The corners of the man’s mouth turned slightly down. “Don’t see why not,” he drawled back.

Trip heaved a contented breath. “Thanks.”

“Welcome.” There was a pause. “Isn’t that’s what friends are for?”

Trip smiled. “Yeah, that’s what friends are for.”

“Good night, Trip.”

“Sweet dreams, my friend.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you've enjoyed it!


End file.
